


Thoughts from the Voting Booth

by theycallmethejackal



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6499381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theycallmethejackal/pseuds/theycallmethejackal





	Thoughts from the Voting Booth

Robert Russell

 

John Hoynes

 

Matthew Santos

 

It should be easy. It should be so incredibly easy to punch the first entry and step out of the booth to drop her ballot into the box.

 

But it isn’t.

 

She’s been working for Bob Russell for the entire primary process, and yet she can’t help that her hand is hovering over the third choice. She sighs as she grasps the ballot in her hand.

 

A voting booth in Wisconsin shouldn’t be the place for her to look back on the last eight years of her life, but it’s also incredibly fitting.

 

Joshua Lyman

 

The name pops into her head unwarranted, and she has to close her eyes and take a deep breath to prevent herself from punching the wall of the voting booth. His name used to bring up an entirely different emotion inside of her, but now it makes her so _angry_.

 

He couldn’t just recommend her to Leo for a better job. He couldn’t take her desire for growth in her job seriously. He was so arrogant and self-centered that he couldn’t see how she needed to move on. And god, if he’d just taken her seriously, there wouldn’t be this rift between them. Maybe they could work for two separate campaigns and still be friends. Maybe she could have even worked _with_ him. Instead he ignored her needs until she was forced to leave him.

 

Her job. She was forced to leave her job. _He_ was the one who made it personal.

 

And then to have the audacity to tell her she’s with the wrong campaign.

 

She moves to punch the card for Russell when a memory pops into her head of the night Santos and Cliff Calley organized the Democratic Congress to combat the Speaker over the stem cell bill. She only caught a piece of the conversation he’d had that night, but she knew in that moment that she was listening to a good man. It reminded her of the day she realized Josiah Bartlet was The Real Thing and drove all the way to New Hampshire just to be part of his campaign.

 

 _Josh doesn’t leave people_. She so vividly remembers saying those words to Amy. And now here she stands in her voting booth, ready to vote for a man she’s not even sure she wants to be president because she left Josh.

 

Donna digs the heels of her hands into her eyes. She’s certain she’s smudging her makeup, but she’s not concerned with that. She’s overwhelmed with guilt she shouldn’t be feeling but does. After he was shot, she promised herself she would be there for him. She wouldn’t be another person he lost. And after Gaza, she thought he felt the same way. Maybe he…

 

She shakes that thought with a groan. She is not about to change her vote to Matthew Santos because of some long-suppressed feelings for her former boss. The part that really stings though is that she knows Josh is right. She _is_ working for the wrong candidate. Bob Russell is nothing but a stuffed shirt. He lacks conviction and he lacks ideas. He says what he must to get the nomination.

 

She completely understands why Josh wouldn’t support him. Josh is one of the few people she knows that truly sticks to his beliefs. He’s probably one of the only people in all of D.C. that does. It’s one of the reasons she fell –

 

 _Nope, not going there_.

 

She takes her ballot and drops it in the box, and it’s not until she’s out of the building that she realizes she’s not even sure who she voted for.


End file.
